Dear Developers: Pushing Gamers Out With PC Specs

This is for the developers who only desire the best looking games in their catalog. It doesn't always make or break your game to have the best looking games out there... but there are times that sales could be affected because of it (specifically on PC).

There are a crap load of PC gamers, and most are middle of the road regarding specs... nothing to old, and most definitely not on the cutting edge of tech. Some developers may shrug these gamers off, but i'm telling you right now (and read this a few times)... you will be the one who suffers for it. When you don't accommodate the middle of the road... you miss out on the majority of sales. Those with higher specs are not the majority, some of us have to bust our humps to afford several games each year and they have to be playable. If they aren't playable with our current specs, what will usually end up happening is a great looking game released today... will ultimately end up forgotten by those who can't play it. What also happens in other cases is that game will get played years down the road once the middle moves forward, and by then the price has gone down.

Some of you may shrug and say that it wouldn't have been purchased at full retail by the middle anyway, but you would be wrong. Budgets exist for a reason and there are many in the middle that make great use of them, and if a great game is out there the chances of it being picked up are greater.

I'll give you an example... Fortnite was tested on a system requirements website over the past 30 days by over... (wait for iiiitttttt) 681,435 people. That's over have a million PC gamers, and 50% of those tests passed... while 50% failed. I won't dump on Fortnite because the specs aren't crazy, but... there are games out there that require at least 12GB of RAM minimum (i.e. Hunt: Showdown). Think of what that does to your audience, especially in an online community... it cuts people out. I won't say it completely eliminates everyone, but who benefits more, the game that few can run... or the one that made sure the audience in the middle of the run can play? Think about it, doesn't make the games bad, but how would the majority of gamers know if they can't play it?